Need to crack down on sham constituency projects

NIGERIA is a polity steeped in bewildering oddities. Amidst a suffocating infrastructure deficit, a chunk of the constituency projects supposedly targeted at driving socio-economic growth are never executed, noted Bolaji Owasanoye, the Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, at the inauguration of the Constituency Projects Tracking Group. This is fraudulent. Annually, these projects are awarded through House of Representatives members and senators since 1999; a policy that they claim, seeks to develop grassroots infrastructure and give their communities a sense of belonging. Accordingly, the ICPC has vowed to interrogate the sham, with a view to prosecuting the guilty lawmakers. It is a step in the right direction.

In all, the Federal Government has appropriated and released over N1 trillion for the execution of these projects since the advent of the Fourth Republic, the ICPC discovered. Predictably, there is little to show for it with corruption brazenly undermining the projects. Out of this, the Muhammadu Buhari administration released N200 billion to lawmakers for constituency projects between 2015 and 2017. The ICPC states that only 37 per cent of the projects has either been completed or are ongoing. This is scandalous. No lawmaker connected with this should go scot-free.

Similarly, BudgIT, an NGO, found that of the 2,516 constituency projects it tracked between 2015 and 2017, only 918 were completed, 395 ongoing and 214 could not be located. In 2018, Buhari lampooned the National Assembly members for mutilating the budget with their so-called constituency projects. The lawmakers cut N347 billion from critical projects, including the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the Second Niger Bridge, the Mambilla Power Plant and Itakpe-Ajaokuta Rail Project. They diverted the allocations to their own 403 projects, increasing the budget by N578 billion. “Out of a total of 852 constituency projects in 20 states in the 2016 Budget that were tracked, 350 were completed, 118 were ongoing, 41 locations not specified in the budget and 343 not done or performed,” Owasanoye lamented.

Coincidentally, that year, Babachir Lawal, the then Secretary to the Government of the Federation, accused the lawmakers of making the budget unworkable with their injection of constituency projects that were not properly conceptualised, and without financial and environmental impact assessment. After a dramatic national soap opera that year, government was forced to include N60 billion for these projects, instead of the N100 billion proposed by the lawmakers to end the standoff.

Undeniably, every president – from Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999 to Buhari – has had to contend with this combustible dilemma. The reckless insertion of constituency projects into the annual budget by the lawmakers has needlessly pitted the parliament against the presidents. In the extreme, the legislators had threatened to impeach the presidents if their allocations for these projects were not released.

It is not a surprise that these projects have become a conduit for siphoning public funds. The ICPC notes that the legislators have perfected a self-enrichment scheme. Against the law, they establish shell companies, and use them to siphon funds for these purported projects.

Nigeria loses heavily on all fronts: lawmakers pocket public funds and projects are not implemented. After their tenure, some legislators convert some of the projects like bore holes dug in their residents to personal use. A lawmaker, Abdulmumini Jibrin, was suspended for 180 legislative days in 2016 for revealing how the budget that year was padded with billions of naira to be shared by some principal officers of the House.

Conversely, constituency projects operate in other countries for the sole purpose of development. Transparency and service to rural communities drive these projects. In India, the Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme is targeted primarily at developing local communities. There are three major stakeholders there: the Member of Parliament, the district authority and the Government of India, official documents state. MPs recommend the projects to be undertaken by the MPLADS. After the recommendation, the district authority will sanction the eligible projects, after which the government releases the approved funds twice directly to the district authority.

This is a sensible and transparent model, unlike what happens here, where legislators allocate, approve and implement constituency projects without recourse to any feasibility studies and other due process requirements. Thus, the constituency projects sham in Nigeria is a golden chance for the new ICPC helmsman, Owasanoye, to make hay.

For too long, the agency has been in the shadow of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission in the fight against corruption. It is sad that ICPC’s antecedents do not give much hope. While the EFCC has been making all the waves, it (the ICPC) has been largely without a focus; its attempts to curb graft have been hugely disappointing. But with the avowal to bring the offending lawmakers to book, all eyes are now on the agency. On Owasanoye’s watch, the commission should pick up the slack, take on lawmakers frontally, but he should do so with a good strategy because corruption is a big industry in Nigeria.

In truth, curbing sleaze is about crime and punishment. Until these greedy legislators are punished, there is no solution to their excesses. Instead of his annual lamentations when the parliament pushes him to the wall in a bid to end the budget impasse, Buhari should support the ICPC by taking a firm stand against the fraud-prone constituency projects.

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